Photo Credits:

Contributors Justin Hoenke

Portland Public Teen Library: 2010 Year In Review on Prezi I’ve been thinking a lot about transparency this year. It might have to do with the term becoming a buzz word of some sorts, or maybe because the ongoing discussion concerning Wikileaks in news media. A huge part of me, […]

I’m not a library director. Heck, who knows if I’ll ever be a library director. But spend some time working in a public library and you’ll see a common theme: most employees and the public have no clue what a library director does. There’s this belief that the library director […]

How to Raise Boys Who Read (Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes) I think what I hate seeing in these types of articles is the general “GAMES BAD BOOKS GOOD” thing (for the full effect, imagine The Incredible Hulk saying that). Perhaps I’m only seeing this because of […]

At my library, we recently started up a circulating video game collection. Since we didn’t have a huge budget and we knew the collection was going to be rather small, we opted to go stark naked with security. There’s also an amazing vibe here in Portland, Maine. People really have […]

Last night, we held the first Teen After Hours event at the Portland Public Library. This program was a collaboration between the library and Officer Ray Ruby of the Portland Police Department. All in all, it was a great success. We played video games, ate pizza, had a massive hide […]

Two teens from Italy in Portland, ME over the summer. One teen librarian. What the heck is gonna bring them together? It’s not a mind blowing idea. But I will tell you this…it works. Here’s our simple story about how we bonded thanks to some technology. For the first two […]

Team JBot (Justin Hoenke, Rafia Mirza, Jeannie Chen, Anne Krakow, Susan Jennings) Phew…time flies. It’s been six months since my first post on being an Emerging Leader and now that I’ve “emerged”, what have I learned? Here goes. THE PROJECT AND THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION To view the full report […]

(a brief interview between Portland Public Teen Library @justinlibrarian and Portland teen @davidchuphoto) What are you using it for? I’m usually sitting in bed and using it as a computer instead of a laptop. I would go back to a laptop if I got a MacBook. What are your favorite […]

In a little over a month, I—along with thousands of other librarians—will be in your backyard as we come to Washington D.C. for the 2010 American Library Association Annual Conference. I will be in town from Friday, June 25 through Tuesday, June 29 , and I am offering you my services […]

Three weeks have passed since the Portland Public Library reopened after a lengthy renovation (which I wrote about here). The addition of a teen area is a completely new idea for the community of Portland, Maine. At first, teens didn’t really understand that this was THEIR space. However, over the last week […]